Nothing is ever taken, only given away

I was talking with one of my clients today, the owner of a successful aluminum forge, and he was giving me some sage business advice.

The tidbit I walked away from our brief meeting today is: In business, nothing is ever taken, it can only be given.

Honesty

Integrity

And most importantly, Reputation.

I take this advice to heart. Once you start giving away what your core values, it is very hard to reclaim them. We just turned down a client that wanted us to install pirated software on his computers. The value that we have gained from that act of integrity more than makes up for the lost revenue in labor. If we had the option to do it again (and I'm sure that we will) we will make the same call and politely ask the customer to either a) purchase legal copies of the software, preferably through us or b) find a new service provider.

-Gj-

 

 

How Sensible Gurus Got it's Name!

I was having a discussion with Patti Wallner, the outgoing president of the Waukesha Chamber of Commerce (www.waukesha.org) the other day, and she asked me a question. “Sensible Gurus, I love the name! Tell me why and how you selected it”

Well, here is our answer.

Gurus, by our (and Wikipedia’s) definition, is one who is regarded as having great knowledge, wisdom and authority in a certain area, and who uses it to guide others like a teacher.

We at Sensible Gurus (www.sensiblegurus.com) feel that one of the most important aspects of our existence, as a company is to teach and share our knowledge with our family of clients! With technology there is normally more than one correct answer for any given question, all having pro’s and con’s with each solution. While many service companies will give a solution and do it, we go a few steps further.

Why?

That is the question we ask. Why are you insisting on this particular application, why do you want a new computer, why are you using Excel for this project? We strive to understand what our customers are having trouble with, why it is an issue, and what is the business need for each request. Then we take the information that is given to us and answer with our solution that we feel will server the customer the best.

We Listen.

One of the most crucial aspects of being a teacher is the ability to listen. We listen to the businesses needs of the customer, and any issues they are experiencing with the technologies that they use! Without asking questions and listening to the answers one cannot determine the best course of action!

The Sensible part of our name comes from the ability to have good reason and suggest solutions that actually make business sense to a company or individual. We have the ability to look at the number of correct answers for any given problem and choose the right one for our customer.

And that is why we are Sensible Gurus (www.sensiblegurus.com)

Patti seemed to like our answer :)

Sun/Java, oh why do you do this?

Carbonite, the consumer/small business online backup company, has struck a deal with Sun to piggyback on Java and offer a free 30-day trial of its widgetry to anybody who upgrades to the latest version of Java or downloads in for the first time.

Carbonite Piggybacks on Java | JAVA Developer's Journal:
http://java.sys-con.com/node/1027624

Grrrrrr! Updates should be updates! WHY add software to an update? If We wanted to (or wanted my customers to) Get Carbonite (Which We don't, Sensible Gurus uses what we feel is a Superior product) we would Download it!!!!! (This goes for you too Apple! Safari is NOT an update to iTunes!)

What type of Tool do I use when I blog?

I am often asked, what tools I use for different tasks, including blogging! Here at Sensible Gurus, we try to stay mainstream, and we do have a preference for Microsoft (not always, but mostly!) We like to, when we can, install software that a supplemental manual and hints and trick can be picked up at the local Borders or Barns and Nobel. For our blogging we use… *insert suspenseful music here* Microsoft Office 2007!

One of the Cool and Neat features of Word 2007 (nay, scratch that, Office 2007. I know you can blog from OneNote as well!) is the ability to use the great editing tools they have (and, my favorite, Spell check) to blog to your favorite Blog Location (not just Live). As much as people complain about Microsoft, the do try and play well with others. You can even insert Images and Graphics

 

 

If you have a copy of Office 2007, and you blog (if you run a business, you should be blogging!) check out the how easy and fun it is to blog from Office 2007!

Analyzing of beggars sales pitch

Coming home from the networking events the other day I was hit up forbidden money from a nice gentleman.

The pitch was pretty interesting than this is what he said,

"Sir? Sir? Please stop. You look like a great guy, not like some of these others around here."

Now this was nice he starts out by complimenting me and telling me I'm better than other people.

"I'm a bit down on my luck, and need to get to Madison," we were standing in downtown Waukesha about seven or 8 miles from the freeway Madison is a good hour drive away

"my family and I have rented a U-Haul and need 45 more dollars to get to Madison. We budgeted $330 but need $45.00 more"

This is interesting, it appears she is trying to show me that he is responsible thing has tried to budget some money for this trip but what confuses me is the largest U-Haul runs for $40.00 and 60¢ a mile. To drive between Waukesha and Madison it would be a whopping $80.00

"I've talked to all the local churches but they won't help a brother out, will you help me get to Madison so I can see my wife and kids"

OK this and was kinda goofy, I thought his wife and kids were no U-Haul truck. Any ways I decided to take a small karma bump so I peeked in my wallet. Drat! Of bunch of twenties and two singles. Well, I don't need that big of a karma bump so I gave him the $2.00

"What? Are you crazy? This is two bucks! This will get me very far!" and he stormed away. I guess some people you just can't please!

Windows 7 woes...

I've been hearing a lot of good things about the Windows 7 Release Candidate, not too may people are saying much bad about it. I admit, I do like it better than Vista, but there are a few stumbling blocks I have run into...
First, The upgrade from Windows 7 Beta to Windows 7 RC has been blocked!

I went around this limitation and followed the directions here: http://www.blogsdna.com/3083/how-to-upgrade-windows-7-beta-build-7000-to-windows-7-rc-build-7100.htm

and upgraded to build 7100. great! First issue, no Start Menu. Not a true problem for me, most of my programs are either pinned to my Toolbar or I fire them off from the Run command.

Second problem, No Internet Access. This took a bit more troubleshooting, after a Reboot, sometimes the computer would add 0.0.0.0 as the default gateway ALONG with my true Default gateway.

again, another easy fix if you know how:
Start a Command prompt Window as an elevated administrator (If you run as a standard user, this won't work)
Type
ipconfig

in your default gateway, you should see 0.0.0.0 along with your normal gateway. If you do! Great!
Type Route Delete 0.0.0.0
then type
ipconfig /renew

and voila! Your Default Gateway is working again, and you can hit the Internet!

FirePlotter, a Nice tool for monitoring Cisco Pix/ASA's and Fortigates!

I stumbled (well, was pointed to) this great tool:







For monitoring my Fortigate Firewalls! Now, I love my Fortigates, they are a great price point for Unified Threat and Decent Firewalling Rules, but the interface and monitoring tools built in could be LOADS better! Like anything it takes a while to get used to!

This FirePlotter tool has taken alot of pain out of monitoring traffic, there is a free and one year subscription paid version of the tool. The free tool will let you monitor some basic settings, such as Ping, FTP, SMTP, DNS, HTTP, PoP3, HTTPS, and RDP. This is great is you are searching for a Rogue Zombie on your network trying to flood e-mail's! (You ARE restricting all machine except for your designated mail Server to send traffice on Port 25, correct?)

The Paid version will allow for additional views, all traffic to be monitored and allows basic commands to be performed on the firewall such as Ping.

If you have a Fortigate or Pix/ASA, check this tool out, the paid version rocks, the free version is worth more than you pay for it!

Just what IP addresses do you need to exclude from your Google Analyitcs so you are not tracking yourself?

I was servicing one of my newer customers today, setting up their shiny new T1 line for their VoIP and Data traffic, it is a great upgrade for them. After a small confusion with the Telco as to where to plug in their Firewall (Not the Phone Switch, but rather the Netgear switch) their server hit my website (www.sensiblegurus.com) much much much quicker than before, Disconnected from my remote session and, case closed....
or was it?

About an hour later, I receive a call, Some PC's are not connecting to the web, or mail servers!

Turns out that all of their PC's had Static IP Addresses, with Static DNS. While the computers could connect to the Internet just fine, they could not resolve names. When asked why the PC's are running Static IPs, I was given the answer a) That is the way the old IT Consultant had it set up and b) so I could exclude the IP range from Google Analytics.

I took a quick glance at the already active DHCP Scope, increased it size, setup WINS and Domain name, and coached my customer that this is really the way to go, much better management of the network! Much easier to deal with than a spreadsheet or notebook remembering all your Static IP addresses.

We changed the computers to get their addresses via DHCP and Bam! They were browsing and downloading their e-mail like a champ! WOOOO!

I started to explain to the customer a bit about NAT (Network Address Translation) and how we don't need to exclude ALL the internal IP addresses at both of his locations, but rather just the external IP of the Firewall. NAT is a technology that allows multiple computers inside a network to share a single external (Public) IP Address. The Firewall, in NAT Mode, acts as a mini Proxy allowing traffic in and out, remembering where the traffic is going, and passing the relevant information back to the requesting computer! Some of the greatest benefits of NAT is the ability NOT to give each and every computer their own Public Internet Address, and NAT by itself does provide some protection to your computer (not nearly as powerful as a true firewall, that can work in conjunction with NAT) This is a very simple explanation on what NAT is,

The customer was happy he doesn't have to re-enter all the private IP addresses in his web page analytics anymore. Just his Public ones! I am happy that the customer is happy!

Takk!

Digital Pictures are my Bane!

Do you want to know the reason I started the offsite backup branch of Sensible Gurus (www.sensiblegurus.info)

Do you want to know the real reason?

Digital Pictures, there I said it, Digital Pictures.

I screwed up. Plain and simple. I switched my wife’s computer from a Desktop to a Laptop, and stored the desktop in the basement. I asked, “Hon, is everything you need on your new computer?”…

Flash forward 7 months, right around Christmas… where my wife wanted to print out a collage for Grandma, and she goes to her computer where she kept the digital pictures she sent out for printing, and they were gone!!! No worries I thought, grab the hard drive from the basement, plug it into a USB Adapter and *click click click*

For you non-techies out there… *click click click* is… bad, real bad

I tried every trick in the book… Freezer trick, mallet trick, Spin-Rite, SysInternals, I spent over 100 hour trying to recover data from that disk! Nothing!

My wife even wrenched it from my hands and brought it to her work where her cousin works as their IT manager (It’s a Fortune 1000 company, and in the top quarter) and tried to get it working there, spending precious corporate time… nada.

I have backups, I have all the RAW images stored on my Desktop, a backup USB Disk, and DVD’s… but I don’t have her edits and selections. To go through my database of pictures…. You are looking at over 200 gigs worth of data…

Yeah… I’m in the doghouse, still! I printed out some pictures for my kids “Marvelous me” week at school (isn’t kindergarten grand!) and… some of the pictures I printed out were not in any of the photo albums we own. Sleeping on the couch again!

Anyway… since this happened, I have

a) Shadow Protect doing daily snapshots

b) The “Sensible Online Backup” backuping up the critical files (the my documents, my pictures, my favorites, etc, and the oh so looked over .nk2 file)

Just so this doesn’t happen EVER again!

Windows 7 Release Candidate Update

http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/04/24/windows-7-release-candidate-update.aspx

The successor to Vista, Windows 7, is going into its next phase getting ready for release. The staff here at Sensible Gurus (http://www.sensiblegurus.com) is really excited! We have been running Windows 7 build 7000 for a couple of months now and it is pretty rock solid! The RC (Release Candidate) is being released to TechNet and MSDN Subscribers on April 30^th, and will be available to the public on May 5^th.

I do not recommend downloading and installing the Release Candidate on any machine that you actually “need” as it is not guaranteed to work! Expect to “play” with settings, drivers, interfaces, and navigation all without support! But, if you enjoy tinkering with computers and operating systems, this is a fun time during the release cycle.

And one more bit of advice… BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP!

-Gj-

Customer Service, what is happening to it?

I just got off an instant message Chat with one of my close customers, actually, I managed and trained this customer when I was working at WennSoft, and he is someone whose technical skills are very sharp! It sparked something in me and I decided to blog about it a little bit…. Here is a cleaned up transcript:

(2:01:28 PM) Mr Customer: Stupid vendors!
(2:01:36 PM) Gjeret at Sensible Gurus: Hey! I resemble that!
(2:01:51 PM) Mr Customer: Xerox guy was going to come Monday never did
(2:01:56 PM) Mr Customer: called him Tuesday
(2:02:16 PM) Mr Customer: said he would be here first thing Wednesday never showed
(2:02:21 PM) Mr Customer: called him up today
(2:02:24 PM) Mr Customer: can’t get a hold of him
(2:02:28 PM) Mr Customer: not picking up his phone
(2:02:42 PM) Gjeret at Sensible Gurus: lol
(2:02:45 PM) Mr Customer: called the phone people yesterday because I tried saving a $200 service call and swap extensions myself
(2:02:54 PM) Mr Customer: and umm well I need them to clean up after me as it did not work right
(2:03:00 PM) Mr Customer: said he would have someone out first thing today
(2:03:02 PM) Mr Customer: never showed up
(2:03:05 PM) Mr Customer: same thing
(2:03:07 PM) Mr Customer: can’t get a hold of him
(2:03:28 PM) Gjeret at Sensible Gurus: you would think in this yucky economy that people would be pounding down your door
(2:04:03 PM) Mr Customer: well Xerox we are not paying for this as it’s a leased printer and we are still working out initial setup issues
(2:04:11 PM) Mr Customer: but the phone people get $200 for setting foot in the door

We then went on to talk about how my business partners can help this particular customer out…

OK, now for my rant.

What happened to Customer Service? What happened to putting an appointment in your CRM Program or even Outlook!?!

I’m looking at my bookshelf right now, and there are a number of books on the subject from back in the time I was a Manager including;

Why Service Stinks….

Raving Fans (Ken Blanchard)

Gung Ho! (Ken Blancard)

The first couple of time I read these books, I couldn’t help but think, wow! This must be a joke? Why would you NOT want to help your customers? The customer is going “Here, take my money, please take it!” and the vendor is just ignoring them!

I got off the phone with a new customer of mine yesterday echoing the same sentiment. She said to me “Gjeret, Thank you very much for calling me back, it is a refreshing change” I’ve been hearing again and again and again stories like this.

Please, if you are being ignored by your vendors, Let me know! In this economy, no, in ANY economy the customer… that means YOU… Should NEVER be ignored! If I cannot help you out, I will find someone who will! That is my promise!